Yesterday Van Jones delivered brilliant testimony on re-building our economy the right way. Here is the video:
Read the full text here.
Van Jones Testifies to House Select Committee
Published by Alex M. Tinker, January 16th, 2009 global warming 4 Comments4 Responses to “Van Jones Testifies to House Select Committee”
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For years, those of us with a passion for protecting clean air, clean water and open space have made the case that investing in energy efficiency and renewable energy would be good for both the environment and the economy. Our energy infrastructure needs updating, wind farms need installing, clean public transportation needs implementing, and just as important, people need jobs! It’s important get Congress behind Obama’s green economic recovery plan if these changes are to become a reality.
Envrironment America wants Congress to hear from people who understand the importance of the clean energy economy – people who already work in green jobs. If you or someone you know has a green job, click on the link below to send congress a message to invest in renewable, sustainable, green jobs.
https://www.environmentamerica.org/action/energy/repower2id4=IGHCM
Thanks for posting this!
Mr. Jones eloquently stated the case for Greening America. His focus—jobs and efficiency have significant multiplier effects in the short and long run. What concerns me is that we may not have a long run. We may be relegated to a very short run as a society and as a civilization. This is not alarmist drivel. Recent discovery of two events aided by global warming has stimulated debate among many in the scientific community on the pros and cons of (1) North and South Pole permafrost melting faster than the rest of the world and (2) the potential release of methane and methane hydrates into the atmosphere, since they are at shallower depths in Permafrost than they are in the ocean.
The issue for some is will we have enough time to explore the safest way to harness this methane and its hydrate as a source of energy? The other is just leave them alone because we don’t need them if we are serious about Greening the economy.
Last March there was a workshop on the “Vulnerability and Opportunity of Methane Hydrates Workshop,” IISA, 13-14 March, 2008 You can find most of the presentations at this link. http://www.iiasa.ac.at/Research/TNT/WEB/Workshops/hydrates/Methane_Hydrates_Agenda.html
Science magazine ran a summary of the meeting, which I will reprint below:
Weighing the Climate Risks of an Untapped Fossil Fuel
John Bohannon
As the energy industry hungrily eyes methane hydrates, scientists ponder the fuel’s impact on climate
VIENNA, AUSTRIA–A recent workshop on methane hydrates felt like a powwow of 19th century California gold prospectors, looking ahead to both riches and peril. Sizing up the prize, Arthur Johnson, a veteran geologist of the oil industry who is now an energy consultant based in Kenner, Louisiana, predicted that “within a decade or two, hydrates will grow to 10% to 15% of natural gas production,” becoming a more than $200 billion industry. And the peril? “The worst-case scenario is that global warming triggers a decade-long release of hundreds of gigatons of methane, the equivalent of 10 times the current amount of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere,” said David Archer, a climate modeler at the University of Chicago in Illinois. Although no current model predicts such an event, said Archer, “we’d be talking about mass extinction.”
When methane molecules become locked in atomic cages of water called clathrates, they form icy chunks that ignite when lit. These solids form wherever methane encounters water at high pressure and low temperature. The necessary conditions reign in permafrost and in some sea-floor sediments, forming a “ring around the bathtub” on continental slopes. This exotic fuel was discovered by the Soviet petroleum industry more than 3 decades ago, but even a few years ago many doubted its commercial potential (Science, 13 February 2004, p. 946). After several successful pilot drilling studies and heavy research investment over the past 4 years, says Johnson, “the question now is not whether industry will exploit hydrates but how soon.”
Considering the skyrocketing price of oil, the answer seems to be soon, says one of the workshop organizers, Nebojša Nakicenovic, an energy economist here at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) outside Vienna. “And yet hydrates are absent from most of the climate discussions,” he says, “and virtually absent from the IPCC fourth assessment report,” last year’s 1000-page tome by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Science, 11 May 2007, p. 812). The goal of the IIASA workshop was to bring together researchers from all the different fields that touch hydrates–from chemistry and economics to climate impact–to get an “interdisciplinary perspective” on the uncertainties.
“It’s clear that one of our biggest knowledge gaps is figuring out the distribution,” says Michael Riedel, a marine geophysicist at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. “We still don’t know how much there is in the world, not even within an order of magnitude.”
Another crucial gap is the flux of methane, which drives hydrate formation over time. The largest amounts of methane hydrates are thought to reside in sub-sea-floor sediments. In a newly built sea-floor-monitoring network called NEPTUNE off the western coast of Canada, Riedel is part of a team studying methane-spewing vents to get a handle on their flow rate and marine chemistry. Where the conditions are just right, methane hydrates form caps over pockets of such gas. These not only are sweet spots for those who want to tap hydrates for energy but also represent a major worry for climate modelers.
“If the sea floor warms up by a few degrees Celsius, the most vulnerable hydrates will melt, and then you’re going to get a massive release of methane,” says Euan Nisbet, a marine geologist at Royal Holloway, University of London. That warming and release is expected to take centuries or even millennia even in the most extreme climate scenarios. Riedel says the methane bubbles from seafloor vents are sponged up by the ocean water. But if a methane release were large and shallow enough, it would reach the atmosphere, says Archer. What is unclear is whether the climate system has methane-driven positive feedback mechanisms that could lead to abrupt climate change.
Johnson threw cold water on the scenario of a massive release of submarine hydrate-trapped methane to the atmosphere. Most hydrate deposits found so far “are as deep as a kilometer below the sea floor,” he says, “and they aren’t going anywhere.” Walter Oechel, an ecologist and carbon-cycle expert at San Diego State University in California, doesn’t find the “doom-and-gloom scenarios” very likely either. “The real story for me is hydrates as yet another chronic contributor to greenhouse gas emissions,” he says.
Others considered methane hydrates part of a greenhouse gas solution. A plan proposed by Vladimir Yakushev, a geologist at Gazprom, the world’s largest natural gas corporation, based in Moscow, involves simultaneously extracting methane and methane hydrates while pumping liquefied carbon dioxide into the underground spaces left behind. Researchers also discussed the idea of using hydrates for electricity generation or even manufacturing on the spot. “We have to try to make it carbon-neutral if we’re serious about climate change,” says Nisbet.
The overarching question of whether methane hydrates should play a major role in climate change debate was up for grabs. Considering the workshop discussions, “the methane hydrate issue is one risk that shouldn’t drive policy considerations at the moment,” concludes Brian O’Neill, an IPCC author and climate modeler at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado. “There are bigger fish to fry.” But Neil Hamilton, director of the International Arctic Programme for the World Wildlife Fund, based in Oslo, Norway, says, “It’s absolutely shocking that hydrates have gotten so little attention.” The risk of a massive methane release, however unlikely, “is reason enough for very serious concern,” he says. More meetings like these are clearly needed.
e magazine ran a summary of the meeting, which I will reprint below:
Further to my earlier comment. A summary from the most recent ICPP Report:
“Absolute MUST Read IPCC Report:
Debate over, further delay fatal, action not costly
In its definitive scientific synthesis report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) today issued its strongest call for immediate action to save humanity from the deadly consequences of unrestrained greenhouse gas emissions.
This report — signed off by 130 nations including the U.S. and China — slams the door on any argument for delay and makes clear we must under no circumstances listen to those who urge that we wait (who knows how long) to develop as yet non-existent technology [this means you President Bush, Newt Gingrich, Bjørn Lomborg]. As the New York Times put it:
Members of the panel said their review of the data led them to conclude as a group and individually that reductions in greenhouse gasses had to start immediately to avert a global climate disaster that could leave island states submerged and abandoned, African crop yields decreased by 50 percent, and cause over a 5 percent decrease in global gross domestic product.
… this summary was the first to acknowledge that the melting of the Greenland ice sheet from rising temperature [which would raise the oceans 23 feet] could result in sea-level rise over centuries rather than millennia.
And readers of this blog know the IPCC almost certainly underestimates the timing and severity of likely impacts because it ignores or downplays key amplifying feedbacks in the carbon cycle (see “Are Scientists Overestimating — or Underestimating — Climate Change” especially Part II and Part III). Indeed, IPCC head Rajendra Pachauri — a scientist and economist — admitted as much:
He said that since the panel began its work five years ago, scientists have recorded “much stronger trends in climate change,” like a recent melting of polar ice that had not been predicted. “That means you better start with intervention much earlier.”
How much earlier? The normally understated Pachauri warns:
“If there’s no action before 2012, that’s too late. What we do in the next two to three years will determine our future. This is the defining moment.”
In short — time’s up! America — we better pick the right President in 2008.
To balance the bad news, the IPCC and its member governments agree on the good news — action is very affordable:
In 2050, global average macro-economic costs for mitigation towards stabilisation between 710 and 445ppm CO2-eq are between a 1% gain and 5.5% decrease of global GDP. This corresponds to slowing average annual global GDP growth by less than 0.12 percentage points.
But how is that possible? How can the world’s leading governments and scientific experts agree that we can avoid catastrophe for such a small cost?
Because that’s what the scientific and economic literature — and real-world experience — says:
Both bottom-up and top-down studies indicate that there is high agreement and much evidence of substantial economic potential for the mitigation of global GHG emissions over the coming decades that could offset the projected growth of global emissions or reduce emissions below current levels.
In fact, the bottom up studies — the ones that look technology by technology, which I believe are more credible — have even better news:
Bottom-up studies suggest that mitigation opportunities with net negative costs have the potential to reduce emissions by around 6 GtCO2-eq/yr in 2030.
Wow! A 20% reduction in global emissions might be possible in a quarter century with net economic benefits!! Take that, delayers who oppose rapid, mandatory action and supposedly represent the “pragmatic center on climate and energy” — but who in fact represent the fatal siren song of “wait for new technology, wait for new technology.”
But don’t we need new technologies? Of course, but we don’t need — and can’t afford — to sit on our hands when we have so many cost-effective existing technologies:
There is high agreement and much evidence that all stabilisation levels assessed can be achieved by deployment of a portfolio of technologies that are either currently available or expected to be commercialised in coming decades, assuming appropriate and effective incentives are in place for their development, acquisition, deployment and diffusion and addressing related barriers.
Yes delayers — we need to do two things at once: aggressively deploy existing technology (with carbon prices and government standards) and aggressively finish developing and commercializing key technologies and systems that are in the pipeline. Anyone who argues for just doing the latter is disputing a very broad consensus — and is neither pragmatic nor centrist.
What do we risk if fail to act now?
Anthropogenic warming could lead to some impacts that are abrupt or irreversible, depending upon the rate and magnitude of the climate change.
Partial loss of ice sheets on polar land could imply metres of sea level rise, major changes in coastlines and inundation of low-lying areas, with greatest effects in river deltas and low-lying islands. Such changes are projected to occur over millennial time scales, but more rapid sea level rise on century time scales cannot be excluded.
In short, we risk that our top climatologists’s warnings on sea level rise prove true. What else?
As global average temperature increase exceeds about 3.5 degrees C, model projections suggest significant extinctions (40-70% of species assessed) around the globe.
IPCC to world: The time to act is now or we risk destroying life on the Earth as we know it today!”